Shannon Browne Counselling Services
132 Main Street E3a1c7 Fredericton, NB, Canada

Now that we are in red phase I will not be seeing clients in my office until further notice. I am happy to do zoom or telephone appointments until our COVID situation settles down. This is discouraging and we are all tired but the only way out is through. Stay safe everyone.

Things aren’t easy right now. Be gentle with yourself.

The little things keep you going.

After just two days of eating really healthy and exercising I’m feeling better already! If anyone needs encouragement I’m here.

I’ll be at the office and ready to listen if anyone needs an appointment over the holidays. I’m working Monday the 21st, Wednesday the 23rd, and a few days between Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve.

Love making little Christmas gifts for my clients with a special wish for them inside. Grateful to know these kids and teens.

Today I officially get the keys to the house. During the little periods of sleep I had I managed to haul out a list of my greatest stress dream hits which included: You didn’t study for your exam dummy. It’s opening night of Anne and you missed the rehearsals... Your toilets are overflowing Your house is haunted You double booked your clients Your friends don’t really like you and are making fun of you behind your back You forgot to buy presents and it’s Christmas Eve And the classic Where the hell are the kids??

The fact that we keep buying the "Kids are falling behind academically" narrative of this pandemic is the grossest example of how we have allowed a corrupt vers...ion of capitalism to alter our basic moral compass. Kids are only falling behind on a scale the adults are defining for them--A scale determined by test scores and achievement measures that were designed decades ago to sort kids by their potential future impact on the economy. This is a system designed to uplift the white and the wealthy, and when applied in a pandemic, it achieves its purpose with terrifying precision: filtering those with the most resources straight to the top. Kids are only falling behind if we choose to measure them on scales that have been broken for decades, and we refuse to change them even during a pandemic in which thousands of their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles are dying every day. Kids aren't falling behind. Kids are adapting. They are learning new skills. They are overcoming. Kids are surviving a pandemic that has shaken their world before they fully understood it. Adults who say they care about them need to put away their measurement tools and show them some damn love and compassion.

I want to send this message out to anyone I have had to reschedule last minute or I have forgotten to respond to through email, to tell you I’m sorry. I’m not at the top of my game right now but I continue to try and push through the obstacles I’m facing. Buying a home for my children and I as a single, self employed woman during a pandemic has been challenging to say the least. Supporting the many individuals who are struggling with life right now can also be challenging... but something I take very seriously and feel privileged to be able to do. This becomes more difficult when the people closest to you are also struggling and in pain on a daily basis while you are trying to manage your own self care and mental health. I know there are many of you reading this who understand. So I guess what I want you to know is I’m doing the best I can right now. My clients are very important to me but sometimes life’s problems make it difficult to run my business to the level I aspire to. The kids and I move into our home at the end of the week and this will be the last foreseeable change for 2020. My hope is that the dust will settle and things will get a little more back to normal. Please be patient with me. You are all important to me.

Sincerely, your friendly neighborhood mailman. Never stop dancing, Ian. (: @dr.daviddc/@mailmanofthecentury)

Anybody else love October?

How blessed am I to work with so many wonderful First Nation clients? Every Child Matters.

We are accepting new patients for an 8 week skills program! We are taking on any high school students with an ADHD diagnosis. This program is to help increase s...elf esteem, self-motivation and build specific skills. For example, how to organize online learning, learn how to prioritize, develop impulse control skills, etc. Please reach out to this email if interested: [email protected] See more

I turned 45 today, which is hard for me to believe because I feel like I’m 30. I had a good cry this morning (as you can see by my puffy eyes) because I’m not where I thought I would be by now. Not that I had a crystal clear picture but I didn’t think I would be getting a divorce, not have enough money to buy my own home, and have a partner I can only see sometimes because we live in different provinces, among other life problems. So, I let myself cry at the end of this dra...ining week. Then I pushed myself to count my blessings. I have two children who love me and I love with all my heart, I have a roof over my head and food to eat, I have a man who feels the same way about me as I do about him, I have his sweet son in my life, I have a small but fortunately busy business with clients I truly care about and my family is pretty healthy overall. I didn’t want to get out of bed but I took Liz Taylor’s advice. Pour yourself a drink, put on some lipstick, and pull yourself together. I’m saving the drink(s) for tonight.

I want to be a baby duckling today.

This brought tears to my eyes. It’s so true.

The first attachments we have as children, set the foundation for our adult relationships. When we’re born, we are dependent on caregivers for our survival. Sec...ure attachments mean we are able to have our physical + emotional needs met, our caregivers model nervous system regulation (able to encounter stress + recover), + attunement (able to be present + join our inner emotional world.) Many of us grew up with parents who had attachment wounding of their own. Meaning, they couldn’t fully provide us this security + safety. They didn’t have it themselves. This can cause anxious attachment. It looks like obsessive focus on our partners, fear based thoughts of being abandoned, + codependency behavior. This manifests as clingy behavior. Any time we become clingy, what we are really experiencing is our attachment wounding coming up. Because we don’t know how to meet our own needs + don’t trust ourselves to get through difficult emotions, we externalize we look to someone else to meet all of our needs. Something no adult can fulfill. The work is to identity, learn our own needs, then to practice meeting them. To practice + hold boundaries. To begin to reflect + connect to our inner emotional world to become vulnerable. To heal + relearn safety with self as well as another person #selfhealers

If you feel like you are hanging on by a thread, you aren’t alone. Please keep hanging on.